What the report covers

The assignment walks through satisfaction through disconfirmation, equity, recovery, loyalty, and dissonance. It is a constructs paper, not a brand case study of one firm.

Define each term, then show which one fits a given moment in a service or purchase story.

Disconfirmation and equity

Oliver's expectation-disconfirmation model says satisfaction follows from whether performance was better, worse, or about the same as what was expected. Equity theory asks whether the exchange felt fair compared with what others received or with what was paid.

A long wait can be a negative disconfirmation, an unfair comparison, or both. Say which claim you are making.

Recovery, loyalty, and dissonance

Service recovery is what a firm does after a failure. A recovery can restore satisfaction, leave a scar, or, in some studies of recovery paradox, exceed the original expectation — that last claim should be treated as a research debate, not as a law.

Dissonance is the discomfort of conflicting thoughts after a decision. Marketing talk about 'reducing dissonance' should stay with Festinger's terms: adding consonant information, changing a belief, or trivializing the conflict.

Limits

Culture changes what counts as a fair apology or a fair wait. A single lecture example is not a national satisfaction index. This page explains mechanisms; it does not diagnose a brand.

Sources

1. Oliver, R. L. (1980). A cognitive model of the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction decisions. Journal of Marketing Research, 17(4), 460–469.
2. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
3. Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2). Academic Press. A named service-recovery chapter if the source uses one.

Last updated: November 13, 2026

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